Latham looks east and west

For all his talk about the western suburbs of Sydney, new Labor leader Mark Latham has not forgotten the significance of Melbourne's eastern belt.

This was a political stamping ground for Gough Whitlam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Mr Latham will campaign there on Wednesday - one of his first stops on a long election trail.

He told The Sunday Age he was from the "Whitlam school of thought", which holds that Melbourne's eastern suburbs are the "classic middle ground" of Australian politics.

But election expert Malcolm Mackerras said yesterday that neither the western suburbs of Sydney nor the eastern suburbs of Melbourne would be the critical battlegrounds for the next election.

Speaking after his well-received leadership debut at the Victorian ALP conference, Mr Latham said he had spent a lot of time in the state.

Mr Latham is about to announce his new front bench, which he has told colleagues will be an "adjustment" rather than an extensive reshuffle. Party sources expect finance spokesman Bob McMullan to become shadow treasurer again, despite the fact the decision by former leader Simon Crean to replace Mr McMullan with Mr Latham was a significant trigger in the events leading to Mr Crean's fall.

Mr Latham said he planned to work hard through January, at the end of which the ALP will have its conference.

He hinted that those pushing for a softer ALP line on asylum-seekers would have their work cut out. "It's silly to say I have a closed mind, but I am a strong supporter of the (Labor) policy at the moment," he said.

At yesterday's conference his call for the children to be let out of detention centres before Christmas got the biggest applause of any of his policy references.

Mr Latham said that as shadow treasurer he had been engaged in a good pre-national conference dialogue on economic policy, but it had got caught up in the leadership issue. His draft economic platform and his views on tax cuts for higher income earners have been strongly challenged by the Left. While he would go back to having a dialogue, the party platform should be about principle and direction rather than detail, which was set within the parliamentary party. "I don't support a prescriptive platform," he said.

Mr Latham said he respected John Howard as "not someone who'd easily lose a fight". While Mr Latham, 42, is being careful not to sound overtly ageist about 64-year-old Mr Howard, he said: "I'd have a more contemporary approach to social issues." He named as examples superannuation for same-sex couples, the republic, multiculturalism and an apology to the stolen generation.

He is confident he can keep to his pledge of removing crudity from his language, although he will continue "straight-talking and straight-shooting". "There are no coins in the swear-jar this week."

Before hitting the road for his first campaigning trip as leader, he returned to Sydney for his son Isaac's first birthday celebrations. Mr Latham, who yesterday again promoted the need for parents to read to children, said he usually managed three books a night when he was home, but might try six to make up for his absences.